This week saw the conclusion of what it pleases me to term an unexpected title-fight. In the red corner: 50 Cent, multimillion-selling rapper, actor, and entrepreneur. In the blue corner: Chinua Achebe, Nigerian novelist, poet and critic, widely hailed as the father of modern African literature.

50 Cent spent much of the last year making a film about an American football player diagnosed with cancer, entitled Things Fall Apart. At least it was called Things Fall Apart – until Achebe got wind of it and instructed his legal team to contest it on the grounds that the title belonged to his own 1958 novel. According to Nigerian news website Naijan.com, 50 Cent offered Achebe $1m for the right to use the title, only to have his offer firmly declined. "The novel ... was produced in 1958 (17 years before rapper 50 Cent was born)," a spokesperson said. "[It is] listed as the most-read book in modern African literature, and won't be sold for even $1bn". K.O.!

It's a neat story, but in the end, I confess, I can't help feeling Mr Cent has been a little hard done by. Achebe, after all, lifted the phrase from the astonishing opening stanza of WB Yeats' evisceration of the post-first world war socio-political landscape, The Second Coming ("Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned ..." ). It seems hawkish, at best, to hound someone else for using a phrase you yourself borrowed (going back further, as one smart cookie on Facebook pointed out, one could equally ask, "did Yeats have to pay Jesus for use of the phrase "The Second Coming"?)

Either way, 50 Cent might take comfort from the fact that he's not alone. Just last week – on this very blog, ladies and gentleman – our own John Dugdale brought the current rash of recycled titles to our attention. Apparently they're all doing it: Richard Holmes, Jeremy Paxman, the lot. As John says, "the sheer number of titles now layered in the collective memory makes novelty ever harder". Perhaps Mr Achebe might therefore be a little more forgiving next time.